Pointed Discussion

Very Poor, nice retro art.

The land cycle that taught WotC that all lands should produce mana.

Except...that isn't true as not all lands actually produce mana.

Worst card ever.
Maybe not, but definitely one of the worst.

Note that Quay is pronounced the same way as "Key" for those of you who care.

This gets .5 stars.
Only because of the art.
Otherwise I would be asking how to give zero stars.

hmmmm, needed to produce mana, even colorless mana, even half a bloody mana!

I've played with this in my pirate deck, just for flavor. It's a real insult when you win with this on the board. Love the art.

Not only does it provide you with no mana, it gives you a useless ability! Sounds like a prime contender for Magic's favorite cards to feel sorry for!!!

From what I can tell, this cycle was SUPPOSED to be the justification for such otherwise (and potentially still, despite the initial scheme) low-wattage legends as The Lady of the Mountain and Tobias Andrion. Andrion's advantage over Serra Angel and Air Elemental was that once you got the Cathedral of Serra and/or Seafarers' Quay out, he'd have banding, every turn (not every other turn like with Helm of Chatzuk, not to mention the banding would be for more than just one creature). Very selective banding, yes, but it WAS within the adventurers' party (q.v. D&D personal campaign inspirations); the Cathedral & Co. were where the adventurers met and formed that party. In fact, extrapolating from the whole situation with Andrion, I think the original intent was that you were EXPECTED to use these lands to create the adventuring party, and thus bring the legends to their intended potential. Very strictly top-down design, but I think the problem was just overestimating how powerful banding was.

Because blue needs to use its legends to attack. And it needs to have multiple legends out.

Am I the only one who likes the ability?
Just pity its for blue legends, worst color to build around for battle.
still, it could be worse, it can still be used in multicolor legends deck (not the set).
I say that most people that hate on banding and bands with others simply don't understand the ability.
It's good , very flavorful and actually quite playable if you build around it.

@A3Kitsune: Maze of Ith would like to have a word with you.

At the time it must've sucked, they keep printing blue legends though, so it wouldn't be a waste of a space in the right deck. The right EDH deck, anyways.

Some blue legends you can use to attack with and might partially maybe occasionally one day benefit from banding together:
Chisei, Heart of Oceans
Gwendlyn di Corci
Cloudhook Kirin
Vendilion Clique
Lord of Tresserhorn
Mistform Ultimus
Rafiq of the Many
Sakashima the Impostor
Zur the Enchanter

With Leyline of Singularity in play it gives all creatures in a mono-blue deck the capacity to band with each other, but not producing mana really hurts this card. It's more situational than Sorrow's Path, and probably Wood Elemental, too. Heck, even Juju Bubble can give you infinite life if you have infinite mana! This is MTG's worst card, in my opinion. At least the aforementioned cards can do a lot of good for you if you play the right cards with them, but the best this can do is give all your creatures banding, which admittedly isn't terribly impressive in most cases, considering the work you have to go through to make it happen.

... Right?

Leyline of Singularity.

Banding is a mechanic that I've never gotten to see in action. Even when I met players who owned cards with the ability, they had no idea what it meant and just assumed they had the same property as Palace Guard. Banding itself is not quite win-more, not quite lose-less as far as gameplay goes. It rewards you for playing creatures with high toughness. It's only useful if you're attacking, and if you're opponent is blocking. It rewards you for playing more creatures with the ability; the closest descendants of the Banding keyword today are Exalted, Battle Cry, and Soulbond.

Actually, banding is even more useful on defense, and works just fine with small creatures. If you have one big creature, and I have a bunch of small creatures, I could block with all of my creatures to kill your big creature. Without banding, that would mean that you'd distribute the damage, and would kill off all of my blockers. If even one single one of my creatures has banding, though, then I get to distribute your damage, instead, and I can thus dump it all on my least-valuable creature, and make a very lopsided trade.

great art, narrow card, combos with leyline of singularity ^^

Oh yeah, all my efficient blue legend beaters are really coming into their own with this one.

To be fair, at the time most Legends were just big vanilla creatures, so giving them banding, instead of being stupid, made sense. These days, blue legends are utility creatures and combo pieces, and not really great for attacking.